Yule Log Cake

I made a pumpkin cake roll a year or two ago but I've never made a yule log cake.  I was going to make one last Christmas but then we were all sick.  So Sim and I are making it this year.  Here is the collection of recipes I will be using.  It's going to be intense.

Chocolate Sponge Cake with Ganache

(accompanying how-to video from Chef John, especially important for knowing how to tell when you're done beating the eggs)

Cinnamon Coffee Frosting (filling) 

Meringue Mushrooms (decoration)

Marzipan leaves and berries (decoration) 

Regarding how to make bark and affix a little side branch

 

Planning to serve peppermint ice cream alongside it because it's delicious and I've never made peppermint ice cream before.

Edited 12/24/2020:  Everything was going great until I started to unwrap the partially cooled cake from the towel to add the filling.  It just stuck to the towel until the cake fell apart completely.  I think when I did a pumpkin cake roll successfully the towel might've been lined with plastic wrap so that the towel itself never touched the cake, no matter how dusted with powdered sugar it was.  I should've done it that way again, but this recipe had such good reviews that I just followed it exactly.  

 I finished unwrapping the broken cake, added the cinnamon coffee buttercream, and wrapped the crumbs and cake pieces back up again to the best of my ability and wrapped the "log" in plastic wrap.  It's a mess.  It's chilling in the fridge now so I can cover it in ganache later, but it'll still be flat and weird shaped even when it's covered.  It looks like it fell in a volcano.  The taste is okay (very light, fluffy cake) and probably won't be affected too terribly by how it turned out, but if I did it again I wouldn't use the cinnamon coffee filling.  I think all chocolate components would be too much chocolate, but the cinnamon coffee frosting wasn't optimal with this cake.  I used it on a very dark mocha cake before and it was better with that.  The only reason I didn't use that cake recipe here was out of fear it wouldn't hold up when wrapped into log form.

Edited 12/30/2020:  I ended up cutting the crushed-looking, broken cake in half and stacking it on top of itself after it chilled in the fridge so it looked more like a messy little layer cake.  After pouring the ganache over it and decorating it with the meringue mushrooms, the overall flavor combination was very good, though it still looked very messy.  Sameer and I ate it, and Simran deemed it "too chocolaty," but she doesn't normally like chocolate cake in the first place.  She liked the peppermint ice cream though.